Sarah Round The World

So, as promised, I’m picking up pretty much where I left off in my last post. Which is to say that, while in Rome (as it were…), I decided to dip a temporary toe into Goa’s so-called spiritual waters – a decidedly brief dalliance which in the event turned out to be enlightening, eccentric and at times just downright disturbing in equal measure.

Over the last few days, I’ve supposedly had my chakras re-aligned; my stagnant prana unblocked; my inner child healed; my aura cleansed; and my negative energies collectively released. I’ve had my pressure points prodded, been gong-bathed into a state of blissful oblivion, and even had my astrological chart compiled (more on which another time maybe). I wisely resisted the urge to go in for the whole past-life regression thing though, as – let’s face it – it’s probably best I don’t confirm anyone’s suspicions about a certain Teutonic dictator with a dodgy tache any time soon… 😉

For the most part, all that aforementioned spiritual mumbo-jumbo left me about as enlightened as a spent lightbulb. That is, however, until yesterday, when – more through luck than judgement – I was persuaded to stump up a thousand odd additional rupees for a “proper” Ayurvedic massage with a bona fide practitioner – as opposed to the amateur cheapo beachfront affairs I’d been indulging in up to that point.

Holy Mary Mother of God! This was full-on sensory blitzkrieg here, complete with super-intense pressure point manipulation which practically had me seeing stars, as I alternated repeatedly between exquisite agony and euphoric release. At one point I almost thought I saw the face of God – were the all-mighty a sadist with ultra powerful digits, that is. Either way, I ended up practically floating out of the place in ecstasy, successfully resisting the temptation to propose to the silver-thumbed masseur on the spot… Not full-on spiritual nirvana perhaps, but it was about as transcendental as voluntarily submitting yourself to a form of therapeutic torture can possibly get!

It’s not all mantras and meditations, though. Goa’s spiritual offerings run the gamut from the genuinely beneficial – think yoga, meditation and massage, all deeply rooted in centuries of ancient tradition and widely recognised by the scientific and medical communities for their physical and mental benefits – down to the downright daft or harmlessly woo-woo. But lurking at the fringes is a decidedly darker side to the so-called “spiritual healing” scene, case in point being an emotional trauma workshop I naively showed up for the other day. To say this class should have come with a trigger warning is an understatement (and, in turn, I’m issuing one to you now – you have been warned!).

Long story short, the self-proclaimed guru running the class (your stereotypical American aged hippy type, who for our purposes here I will call “Deva Batshit”) turned out to be a walking cocktail of questionable beliefs at best, and downright dangerous “teachings” at worst. Among the many flavours of BS she spouted over the course of the session (of which there were far too many to unpack here), she also turned out to be bizarrely fixated on the souls of aborted foetuses – practically lightening up with undisguised glee when two ladies in the class were pressed into “confessing” to having had one. Well, according to the oracle that is Deva Batshit, these aborted “lost souls” apparently latch onto the mother’s spirit like some eternal cosmic stalker, trailing her through multiple lifetimes until they can be psychically “set free” to fulfill their true destiny and shizz. A notion that is clearly unhinged, as well as oddly reminiscent of old Catholic ideas about unbaptised babies’ souls lingering eternally on in limbo – plus ça change and all that.

For all the tongue-in-cheek tone of this post, I have to admit that, when I found myself unexpectedly bearing witness to a role-play between a tearful English woman and the spirit of her unborn child, suffice to say I knew immediately that I was seriously in the wrong place here. And as for the insidious Deva Batshit, I’m not sure if she’s knowingly exploiting people’s very real pain, or whether (as I suspect) she’s truly bought into her own nonsense at this point. Still, there’s a certain poetic justice in knowing that karma – a concept she no doubt bandies about when it suits her sales pitch – has a way of catching up with even the most fervent peddlers of snake oil eventually…

(For a far more credible and scientifically informed take on the relationship between trauma and epigenetics, I highly recommend the works of Gabor Maté, which mercifully bear absolutely no comparison to this wholly ill-informed, fantastical shit show.)

And – for better or for worse – that’s a wrap for Palolem. All in all, I’ve spent five days allegedly ‘unlocking my potential’, only to end up re-embracing my inner cynic and over-indulging in massages here – from the tame to the truly transcendental. Still, not a terrible way to spend a week (passing encounters with LSD-addled old crones aside) – and definitely in keeping with the original brief to spend more time “being” than “doing” for once on my travels.

Tomorrow it’s off to the Goan capital Panaji, where I’ll be getting back to the latter – but keeping it at a measured pace, and likely with the odd spa visit thrown in for good measure too. After all, got to keep those chakras in alignment from now on! 😉

Well, it’s been a decidedly relaxing few days here in lovely Palolem, where my aim has simply been to maintain the blissed-out state I (of sorts) managed to achieve at the Bamboo Yoga Retreat over the past week. Not that it’s been all that hard, particularly. As I mentioned in my last post, Palolem very much epitomises that quintessential Goan hippy vibe and, quite frankly, it’s not like I’m exactly over-exerting myself here much either…

The original plan had been to squeeze in a couple of day trips from Palolem, namely to the Tanshikar Spice Farm and Dudhsagar Falls. However, on weighing up the heat, hassle and high cost of getting there (both a good hour or more away) against the sheer number of beachfront spa treatments I could indulge in far more conveniently right here for the same price, I swiftly binned off that idea. After all, Dudhsagar is hardly Niagara Falls, and it’s not as if I haven’t toured my fair share of spice farms across Asia in my time either (the one in Bali, where we drank cat poo coffee, would be a pretty tough act to follow, anyhow…).

Instead, my days here have since settled into a predictable yet satisfying rhythm. Firstly, up at six for a sunrise run and to see the beach slowly but surely come to life, all while the majority of fellow tourists slumber on in their beds.

Next up later that morning, some form of Southern Indian brunch, such as dhosa, idli or aloo paratha, each accompanied by some form of sambal – plus at least one obligatory lassi in the mix, obviously!

Afternoons have typically been spent alternating between the various massages, classes or spiritual healing type workshops on offer to the itinerant Goan soul-searching contingent here. As for now though, let’s put a pin in that one until my next entry, as this definitely warrants its own separate post in another day or two’s time…

Back in the here and now though, come six pm-ish and you’ll typically find me sundowner in hand and shooting the breeze with other travellers in one of the many beachfront bars here. Big shout out to Claudia (if you did end up reading!) – a Canadian practitioner of Ayurvedic medicine, currently on a research trip to Goa, with whom I ended up putting the world to rights on one such memorable occasion. As promised, @Claudia, I really will try to get that pesky vata imbalance under control once I get home – now that I actually know WTF that means, that is… 😉

Eventually, dinner time rolls around, which for me usually involves a visit either to one of the many beachside restaurants or a back-street dhaba. To date, I’ve been happily working my way through the vast array of local Goan cuisine, with specialities sampled so far including prawns xacuti and various seafood thalis.

Anyway, it’s late now, and as you can tell, I’m officially fed, watered, socialised and relaxed after yet another day in paradise here. Next time, we’ll be diving more into Goa’s so-called ‘spiritual’ side, where things get a little more… ummm… intense, let’s say. Until then, namaste and catch you all up on the latest goings on soon!

Well, here we are all still alive – to the best of my knowledge at the very least… It’s times like this in life that I wish I wasn’t such an epic worrier. It’s almost like I need a practice of some sort – one with both mental and physical applications – to help discipline the mind and still the incessant mental chatter… 😉

As for now, I’ve moved on to Palolem, another white sandy beach about twenty minutes up the coast. I have to say, it was a bit of a wrench to leave the blissful Bamboo Yoga Retreat after such an idyllic last few days, but thankfully it’s “only” on to another beach at this point and not like having to return to the “real world” just yet. That said, Panaji (the Goan capital) may end up being a bit of a shock to the system when the time comes – not to mention the inevitable return to work after all this too!

Still, I genuinely had a great time at the Bamboo, and would absolutely do something like this again in future. In fact, I’m rapidly coming to the conclusion that yoga retreats are to women of a certain age what youth hostels are to backpackers: i.e. a great way to meet people on the move, do something vaguely cultural / edifying by day, and then collectively converge on the bar to get a bit squiffy together by night… I even had one of the older ladies hug me last night and tell me that I’m a beautiful soul. I mean, she was four sheets to the wind at the time, but still, I’ll take it! 😉

As for Palolem, this is definitely much more how I expected a “typical” Goan beach to be, i.e. raised bamboo huts on stilts; lots of little dhabas offering curries and cocktails; and locals hawking everything from bracelets to boat trips on the beach (fortunately only minimal pressure to buy though):

After having a bit of an explore, I ended up popping into the quirky Mill café for a spot of lunch and a perusal of the local notice board. Yoga classes? Check. Art workshops? Check. Rebirthing ceremonies and past-life regression sessions? Naturally – this is Goa, after all, home of the stereotypical free-spirited, eco-conscious, yoga-pant-wearing, New Age type Western travellers, who flock here in search of spiritual nirvana… or maybe just a good Instagram post. My lunch – a turmeric and ginger lime soda and a chickpea and feta paratha wrap with pomegranate and vegan mayo – wasn’t exactly authentically Indian here. But it was, however, very much authentic “hipster wanker”…. 😉

Needless to say, I won’t be signing up to revisit any past lives any time soon. Still, if you can’t beat them, join them, I suppose… Personally speaking, I’ll happily stay on the whole wellness / ‘spirituality’ bandwagon here over the next few days, in the form of a few deep breathing exercises, the odd turmeric latte, and a good pressure point massage or two – achieving zero actual enlightenment along the way, of course… 😉

Anyway, on that note, that’s it for today – until next time!

Well, a few days on and – much to my own surprise – I find myself having very quickly surrendered to the serenescent influence of the Bamboo Yoga Retreat, which (as I alluded to in my last post) is turning out to be something of a paradise on earth… I never imagined I’d so effortlessly slip into the daily rhythm here, which – bar the odd spa treatment – runs pretty much exactly the same here every day, with only the type of yoga classes held and food served really changing… In addition to the below schedule, you can also take as read in my case that 6am is “run time” and 6pm “wine time”. Yin and yang and all that… 😉

But seriously, I did not expect to so readily adapt to this somewhat hypnagogic new routine – not given my usual nature as incurable control freak and life-long high-octane traveller. And yet, contrary to expectations, I’m absolutely loving the sense, for once, of being truly unburdened of the constant decision making, logistical planning and necessity of getting oneself from A to B (which, as anyone who’s read my Japan posts knows, collectively constitute the mainstay of a usual “Sarah trip”). By contrast, what to do, what to eat, when to sleep, etc., are all pretty much pre-decided for me here, with the most challenging decision being which spa treatment to book in for the day… Even the yoga and meditation classes are, I suspect, more a means of “structuring nothingness” than representing a true end in themselves – merely providing a way of punctuating the day, while otherwise allowing one’s mind to simply drift off into blissful oblivion…

As for the yoga, it turns out that pretty much everyone – bar the “top tier” of yoga enthusiasts here – found that initial power yoga session seriously hard too (or, sensibly, opted to sit it out altogether), which made me feel rather better after my previous, somewhat frustrated post. As predicted, I’ve definitely gotten much more out of the slower-paced sessions, where – rather than having to try to juggle multiple movements in quick succession (no chance!) – you maintain a single pose for up to several minutes at a time, “breathing in” to the stretch and allowing yourself to slowly but surely relax your muscles in the process. This was something of a revelation in itself, as I realised in doing so just how much stress and tension I’ve been seemingly hanging on to without realising. I also found the guided meditation sessions (where you focus on someone’s voice) surprisingly resonant too – as opposed to those spent sitting in the lotus position endlessly chanting ‘ohmmm’, which, quite frankly, just left me feeling a bit silly.

I wouldn’t say I’d had any grand epiphanies per se here, but could definitely see myself going in for a bit of slow flow hatha or yin yoga once back – though it remains to be seen how far that actually sticks on home turf. After all, it’s one thing doing a relaxing yoga class to the slowly setting sun and the calming sound of waves crashing against the sand:

Quite another, however, to try and replicate it at home, lying on the living room floor while keeping one ear out for the lodger and being repeatedly jumped on by the cat…

As for now though, I’m enjoying my stay here beyond expectations – with the only downside to speak of being Putin seriously pissing on my chips over the course of the last 24 hours. After all, it’s hard to stay fully “in the moment” while world leaders threaten global thermonuclear annihilation, which I’m hoping against hope represents “just” the usual posturing and bluster here…

Anyhoo, tomorrow marks my last full day here before I move further up the coast to nearby Palolem. I’ll admit, I’m almost sorry to leave – but I figured I’d still post today in the interim though, just in case it all goes boom in the next 24 hours. In which case, I’ve had a good innings and will at least be going out on a high… well, until the radiation poisoning and/or fallout make it to remote south-western India, that is….

And on that cheerful note, I’ll say goodbye for now, and hopefully post again from Palolem in a few days’ time… Fingers well and truly crossed till then!

Namaste. I am writing this blog post to you, mere mortals, from a higher plane of consciousness, one where – through the transformative power of asana and dhyana* combined – all truths of the world have revealed themselves unto me, and body, mind and spirit now align as one… Ohhhhmmmm.

Or not! So far, I am obviously yet to get anywhere near nirvana, or even getting much of a handle on yoga as a practice either, truth be told. The high-intensity “power yoga” type sessions I’ve had so far have been both a) too technically challenging for me to fully keep up with, and b) closely accompanied by a stream of consciousness internal monologue which in my case ran something like this: Why can’t I frikking do this? Oww, this really hurts. I’m hungry. And rubbish everything. How much longer can this class bloody go on for? Maybe I’m undiagnosed dyspraxic? I’d seriously kill for that instructor’s abs. I’m such a numpty. How many steps have I done so far today? I wonder what’s for lunch later? Mmmm, chai masala… What time is it right now in Seoul? I wonder how work is getting on? – and so on and so forth ad nauseum….

Still, the meditation bits I can at least get behind – not that my brain in any way deems fit to dial down the incessant running commentary for the occasion (it doesn’t), but at least I’m actually lying down in the process – as opposed to inwardly berating myself for failing to successfully move beyond any yoga position other than sodding ‘downward dog’…

Still, tomorrow is another day though! The beauty of this place is that they apparently vary up the style of yoga from class to class, so – while the last couple have been undeniably pretty intense – there are also sessions coming up that are based on more “slow flow” type movements, where it’s more about holding static poses for minutes at a time, rather than transitioning dynamically from one pose to the next in quick succession (which is where I always seem to come rapidly unstuck…).

Whether I ultimately end up catching the yoga bug or not here though, the Bamboo Yoga Retreat itself is still absolute paradise on earth. Unbelievably, we pretty much have an entire mile long stretch of white sandy beach and warm water ocean almost entirely to ourselves here, being shared only with a local fishing village at the far end. This means: no shops, no vendors, no hassle, no noise, no interruptions, no one hawking tourist tat, etc., just idyllic, unspoiled Indian coastline – the kind of place I didn’t think still even existed in today’s over-touristed, late-stage capitalist world! Despite the warm water, attempts to swim here were short-lived though; the sea was deceptively strong, and on consideration I’d prefer not to drown myself on this trip – at least not so early in at any rate.

So, fair to say that Bamboo Yoga Retreat is very much my kind of place: calm, quirky and well-run, with both bar and spa on-site, friendly fellow travellers to hand, as well as fantastic bio-diverse vegetarian food and plentiful chai masala (my personal amber nectar of the moment) on offer for brunch and dinner daily.

As we have clearly established from all the above, I am not exactly the type to wind down easily (understatement of the year!). All that being said though, yoga aside, there’s no denying that this place clearly has a definite magnetic relaxation pull of its own here. And, let’s face it, if I’m ever going to learn to truly chill the eff out – or at least stop fucking swearing at myself – right here certainly feels like the perfect place to start… 🙂

* Sanskrit for postures and meditation

^ I can’t take credit for this title btw. I ran the draft of this post through ChatGBT, and this it what it came up with. Not bad, GenAI, not bad at all…

Well, I’ve at long last made it to Goa (Polem beach, to be exact) after best part of 24 hours’ travel and zero sleep – so knackered is not the word at this point…

Still, the journey went smoothly enough, with both flights being on time and airport immigration proving remarkably efficient – though my transfer from international to domestic terminals at Mumbai did admittedly seem to put the inexplicable cat amongst the pigeons amongst the airport staff on site there. At one point, my boarding pass was being officiously passed around, scrutinised and hotly debated amongst at least half a dozen security agents, before they at long last concluded that, yes, I was indeed in the right place after all (which quite frankly I could have told them myself…).

On leaving the airport, it was immediately right back into the fray that is India: i.e. constantly blaring car horns, traffic flows seemingly with a mind of their own, little old ladies hawking all manner of items along the roadside, and cows bloody everywhere!

Fortunately, after a looong drive through unending green fields of pine trees and rice paddies, I reached the Bamboo Yoga Retreat, my abode for the next several days and genuine oasis of calm amidst the chaos. It was getting dark by the time I rocked up, so I couldn’t take any decent pics, but here are a few from t’interweb to give you an idea…

The plan is to stay here for the next six days, with the (possibly wishful thinking) aim of finally cobbing on to what other people seem to see in yoga and meditation – two practices I sense would likely do wonders for my ridiculously overactive brain, but which, despite best efforts over the last couple of years, I have spectacularly failed to master myself on home turf so far. My thinking goes that, if I can’t make even a little headway on a beautiful, secluded beach in India, the very birth place of yogic tradition, then it’s probably just not meant to be – but at least I’ll know I have given it a proper go while here at any rate….

That being said, a very much earthly distraction from these lofty goals has been thrown into the mix already! I had assumed that Bamboo Yoga, given all its blurb on spiritual health, physical wellbeing and mental harmony etc., would be dry as a bone (not counting the usual array of various herbal teas…) – but apparently not! There is in fact a fully-stocked beach bar on site after all, and – well – when in Rome and all that…

And so, unsurprisingly, that is where I’m now officially headed to grab a much needed drink after such a long journey and hopefully get chatting with some of my fellow retreat goers, who – as predicted – seem to be universally female, middle-aged, middle-class, and probably in the midst of a midlife crisis to boot… In short, I’m sure I’ll fit right in! 😉

Anyhoo, that’s it for now – till next time!

* ‘Namaskar’ rather than ‘namaste’, as that’s apparently how it’s said in Konkani, the local Goan dialect.

Well, I’m finally off to Goa – a trip so long in the planning that I find myself vaguely surprised that it’s finally rolled around at all…

I’m aiming for a bit of a change in pace for this trip, rather than going in for my usual round of jampacked schedules and epic route marches from dawn till dark in my frenzied efforts to see best part of half a country in the space of just a couple of weeks. This trip, by contrast, will hopefully be that bit more balanced between “being” and “doing”, with a fair degree of downtime built in alongside my usual explorations…

The trip will be roughly broken down into three parts: a first few days in a yoga and meditation retreat in South Goa, followed by a few days beach time (with a few day trips factored in too), then finally a bit of time spent in Portuguese-influenced Old Goa to see the sights – and of course eating and drinking (mainly my beloved chai masala – the real thing!) my way around the place in the process too…

While I’m definitely looking forward to it, I can’t say I’m not a little daunted by taking on India a second time – first time being nearly twenty years ago, when I visited the North (Delhi, Agra, Jaipur, Fatehpur Sikri and Varanasi). Crikey, don’t I just look young there…

I am definitely hoping that one of the benefits of travel at 43 rather than 23 are that the sexual harassment encountered last time round will have slackened off a bit, but that may well be wishful thinking here. After all, if you’re the type to follow someone down the street furiously masturbating, you’re probably not going to be put off by a few crows’ feet… They do say Goa is a bit more chill all round though, so hopefully it will be as drama-free in that respect as possible!

As for now, I’m posting this from Heathrow Terminal 5 (ridiculously early, as per usual…) before setting off later this evening. Anyhoo, I’ll say ‘namaste’ for now and post again in a few days’ time from the other end… Till then!